Category: UNCATEGORIZED

A rare public showdown between Congress and the CEOs of tech’s biggest companies is still on track after being postponed last week. The House Judiciary Committee hearing, originally set for Monday, will now take place Wednesday, July 29 at 12 PM Eastern Time. The date was changed in light of the death of the civil rights leader and Georgia Representative John Lewis, who will be honored in a ceremony Monday in the Capitol building.

The hearing, titled “Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,” will see an unusually comprehensive cast of tech’s most powerful leaders face off with lawmakers.

Any hearing that manages to drag a single tech CEO to Washington D.C. — even virtually, in this case — is notable and Wednesday’s hearing will hear testimony from four of them. In the hearing, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook will all face questions about their company practices and concerns that anticompetitive behavior is impacting some of tech’s key markets for the worse.

The hearing is the latest chapter in the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee’s ongoing antitrust investigation targeting many of tech’s largest, most powerful companies that was first announced last year.

“Since last June, the Subcommittee has been investigating the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline said in a joint statement.

“Given the central role these corporations play in the lives of the American people, it is critical that their CEOs are forthcoming. As we have said from the start, their testimony is essential for us to complete this investigation.”

We’ll be following the hearing closely on Wednesday. If you stumble onto this page the day of, the link below should provide a reliable stream.

Tech companies are increasingly finding that accessibility isn’t a widget you plug into an otherwise final product, but something that’s integrated from the very beginning of development — but that takes resources few possess. Fable hopes to make disability-inclusive design easier by providing testing and development assistance from disabled folks on-demand, and has raised a $1.5M seed round to do it.

“The person who experiences this problem is usually the best one to solve it,” Alwar Pillai, co-founder of Fable, told TechCrunch. But that’s rarely how it works with accessibility features.

More often than not, she said, the people developing them are able and under 40. “It’s under-prioritized and incomplete,” Pillai said. “It’s not about, is this product really usable by a blind person? Businesses should be consulting with disabled folks, and Fable is a platform that connects digital teams to them so they can include them in building and testing from the get-go.”

Fable provides on-demand access to people with various disabilities that need to be considered during the design process. Prototypes or mockups can be sent to individuals on call, who then return an evaluation within 48 hours.

“Most companies have huge digital products, but no idea what it’s like for people with disabilities, like that a signup flow takes an hour for a blind person,” said co-founder and CTO Abid Virani. “So we put put a couple prototypes in front of, maybe, someone quadriplegic or low vision who has to zoom in a lot, and observe how they go through that. They’ll give feedback on all kinds of stuff you don’t expect.”

Of course customers can pick and choose which demographics, disabilities, and platforms they want to target and test, for example blind users on mobile browsers.

It’s important, Pillai and Virani emphasized, that this process takes place during development and doesn’t slow it down, otherwise it will be left to the end of development and considered a necessity for ADA compliance rather than actually being about accessibility.

“You can be compliant and still have a bad site,” noted Virani, but companies don’t tend to have the ability to recognize that, since they rarely have disabled testers.

There’s also the consideration that with large products, there are all kinds of integrations, plugins, and partners that may or may not be accessible, yet are important parts of the experience. If your ostensibly accessible site hands things over to a payment provider at the last minute that’s difficult to navigate, it’s not really accessible.

That’s throwing away a lot of business, Pillai pointed out. “These are people with billions in disposable income, and they’re untapped,” she said. “It’s a market opportunity.” But only if companies design for accessibility from the start.

Not only that, but with the pandemic creating a shift to working from home, disabilities that were no problem in the office may prove troublesome with remote tools.

In addition to supplying experienced people with disabilities for testing — and providing those people with steady work, which for some can be difficult to come by — Fable is hoping to create and publicize improved testing methodologies and get data out there to improve the status quo.

The company’s $1.5M round was led by Disruption Ventures in Canada (where the company is based) and Village Global in Silicon Valley. “We wanted people who believed we could do social good and build a billion dollar business,” said Virani.

With the Americans with Disabilities Act having just turned 30 yesterday, it’s clear we’ve come a long way since the ’90s — but not only have we still got a lot of work to do, but it’s ongoing work. Building accessibility and inclusivity into development and testing at a fundamental level should help keep those goals in sight.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

After the morning show went out, the Equity crew could not shut up about the Qualtrics-SAP deal, so we had no choice but to jump back into recording mode for an off-the-cuff Equity Shot. As always, Shots are short-form Equity episodes that focus on a single, news topic.

Building off of Danny’s SAP knowledge, Natasha’s curiosity about the future Qualtrics S-1, and my own recent dive into the SAP and Qualtrics numbers, we managed to cover quite a lot of ground. So, if you wanted to know:

1. Why did SAP have to pay so much for Qualtrics back in the day?
2. Why is SAP willing to part with Qualtrics so soon after buying it?
3. How much might Qualtrics be worth?
4. And, of course, did the Equity team expect to see this news in 2020?

Then you are probably going to like what we have in store for you.

Spoiler on that last as the answer is a firm no, but, all the same, what fun. That’s about it for this Equity Shot, hit play, have fun, and we are back Friday morning unless something else happens, like a Palantir S-1.

Sport and fitness tech giant Garmin has confirmed its five-day outage was caused by a ransomware attack.

In a brief statement on Monday, the company said it was hit by a cyberattack on July 23 that “encrypted some of our systems.”

“As a result, many of our online services were interrupted including website functions, customer support, customer facing applications, and company communications,” the statement read. “We immediately began to assess the nature of the attack and started remediation.”

Garmin said it had “no indication” that customer data was accessed, lost, or stolen. The company said its services are being restored.

TechCrunch previously reported that the attack was caused by the WastedLocker ransomware, citing a source with direct knowledge of the incident. WastedLocker is known to be used by a Russian hacking group, known as Evil Corp., which was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury last year.

Garmin is expected to report earnings on Wednesday.

More soon…

As a result of the pandemic, accelerators have moved operations fully remote to abide by social distancing. The shift has forced well-known programs like 500 Startups, Y Combinator and Techstars to go fully online, while encouraging existing venture capital firms to launch new digital-only fellowships like Cleo Capital and NextView Ventures.

Before the pandemic, accelerators could advertise their value by lending desk space once used by Airbnb, Twilio and Brex’s co-founders, plus a glitzy demo day. Now, stripped of their in-person element, the actual value of an accelerator program — and the network they provide — is being tested in new ways.

So a question remains for participating founders: Are they getting the benefits of what they thought they signed up for?

In the Zoom where it happened

The last thing Michael Vega-Sanz wanted to do was was join another Zoom get-together for entrepreneurs. But the car-sharing company he co-founded with twin brother Matthew was in the middle of a pivot, so they joined NextView Ventures’ inaugural remote accelerator program.

“I envisioned an accelerator with awkward happy hours, mass Zoom calls,” Vega-Sanz said. Fast-forward one month into the program, he says it “has been quite the opposite.”

Before joining NextView’s accelerator, Vega-Sanz did an in-person incubator at Babson College in Boston, but there’s “a lot less fluff” in being virtual, he told TechCrunch.

“[With in-person] the reality was you’d go to lunch, and by the time you drove over there and had all your side talk, small talk, chit-chat and actually got into the nitty-gritty of the event, there was a lot of time loss,” he said. “You could have been working for your company during that time.”

If possible, Vega-Sanz still recommends that first-time founders attend a physical accelerator instead of a virtual one for the energy it brings, even with the downside of useless events.

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox. 

Hello and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B.

It’s that whacky time of year when the heavens open and earnings fall from the sky, giving us precious insight into publicly traded companies. Over at TechCrunch we closely follow startups; we also keep an eye on publicly traded companies — a list that is growing in this summer of the SPAC. My earnings highlight this week is Tesla, an often polarizing company that has had an unprecedented stock run up since March.

I’ve been writing about Tesla for nearly a decade. Its earnings reports, and the reactions to them, are fascinating. The company’s second-quarter earnings report was no different. At first glance, Tesla appears to have won on all fronts, managing to extend its profitability streak to four quarters — its longest period of profitability to date — despite headwinds from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’re here to provide a complete picture of each company we write about. Here are other details that matter beyond the bottom line.

Tesla revenue was nearly flat compared to last quarter and down 5% from the same period last year. Tesla was able hit its profit mark after slashing operating expenses and taking in $428 million of regulatory credit revenue — (regulatory credits accounted for roughly 400% of 2Q GAAP profit, per Morgan Stanley). Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn said during the earnings call that Tesla expects to double its revenue from regulatory credits in 2020 over last year. He also said he expects regulatory credit sales to decline eventually.

One upside surprise: Tesla generated a positive $418 million of free cash flow in the quarter, which was much better than anticipated.

Finally, watch for capital expenditures and operating costs in the second half of the year. Tesla is going through an unprecedented expansion and says it will have three factories under construction — Berlin, China and Texas — this year. The Texas factory, which will produce the Cybertruck, Tesla Semi and the Model Y and Model 3 for the East Coast, was also announced on the call.

Alrighty, let’s dig in. Vamos!

Reach out and email me anytime at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin’

Micromobility companies Dott, Lime and Tier Mobility scored a huge win this week and secured permits to operate in Paris, one of a handful of cities in the world that have become key battlegrounds over market share in the shared scooter and bike industry.

About 16 companies were vying for a spot. Bird is perhaps the most visible loser in this gambit. Just a year ago, the U.S. scooter pioneer made a big bet on the French market and announced plans to open its biggest European office in Paris. Bird said at the time that it wanted to hire 1,000 people by mid-2021.

Other companies that applied for the permit included Bolt, Comodule, Spin, Voi and Wind.

Paris is viewed as one of a handful of prime marketplaces to deploy scooters. How important is Paris? William Henderson, CEO of Ride Report, put it to me this way in a recent interview.

“A handful of small handful of companies will go out of business as a result of not getting that one permit — that’s how big a deal it is, just that one market.”

In other micromobbin’ news this week ….

Bicycles have become a tool used by protestors and police.

Cowboy has raised a $26 million (€23 million) in a Series B funding round from Exor Seeds, HCVC, Isomer Capital, Future Positive Capital and Index Ventures. The startup has been manufacturing premium electric bikes and selling them directly to consumers around Europe.

Google Maps has rolled out some new features for bicyclists as demand for safe routes has skyrocketed. Since February, requests for cycling directions in Google Maps have jumped by 69%, according to Google. The app now has end-to-end directions that include docked bike share information. For some cities, Maps will show users links to open the relevant bike share app to book and unlock the bike. The blog post is worth a read, if only to understand how Google Maps determines the best route.

SoundCloud founders Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung, together with the co-founder of Jimdo, Christian Springub have launched a new subscription e-bike service called Dance. The invite-only program kicks-off first in Berlin, with an all-inclusive service package of a €59-a-month “introductory price” and its own design of e-bike. The founders’ goal is to emphasize the community aspects of the rental service, just as they did with SoundCloud.

Deal of the week

A PSA about deals. This is going to sound like an obvious message, but alas, conversations with folks at several transportation startups in the past two months have prompted me to spell it out here. The details, or terms, of deals and partnerships matter. I try to provide the most complete reporting possible when I cover partnership announcements, despite efforts by companies to keep terms secret or to paint a rosier-than-reality picture of the deal. “Try” is the important word. I’m not always successful.

Take the TuSimple – Navistar deal announced last week. The two companies said they would develop and begin producing autonomous semi trucks by 2024. It also involved Navistar taking an undisclosed stake in the startup.

This appeared to be a critical win for TuSimple, the autonomous trucking startup with operations in China and the U.S. The timing of the announcement was also important; I learned and reported last month that TuSimple was starting to shop around for at least $250 million in new funding.

However, what wasn’t clear until The Information’s reporters talked to folks familiar with the deal, is that TuSimple is expected to pay Navistar “tens of millions of dollars per year for at least several years to develop and gain access to Navistar trucks.” TuSimple also “gave” Navistar an equity stake.

The partnership may very well end up being fruitful for both companies. That doesn’t change the facts that this deal has an unusual structure and illustrates the challenges that TuSimple as well as other self-driving trucking startups face as they try to form partnerships with legacy manufacturers.

Other deals that got our attention this week …

Claims Genius, a company that provides instant vehicle damage assessment using computer vision and artificial intelligence technology, raised $5.5 million in a Series A funding round that included investments from Malaysia-based Financial Link and SIRI Info Solutions.

Dexerity emerged from stealth with $56.2 million in funding raised to date, from a long list of backers, including Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Obvious Ventures, Pacific West Bank, B37 Ventures, Presidio (Sumitomo) Ventures, Blackhorn Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures and Stanford StartX. Dexerity has built a full-stack solution aimed at creating collaborative robotics systems. (Yes, this isn’t exactly mobility, but there is a crossover to robotics) The hardware-software system is designed for a variety of different tasks, including bin picking and box packing, targeted at warehouse fulfillment and logistics needs.

Gett, the ride-hailing company based in Israel and London, raised $100 million to fund its B2B business, which CEO and founder Dave Waiser says is growing — not shrinking or staying flat — in the midst of the global health pandemic. The company has raised, to date, $750 million, with investors including VW, Access and its founder Len Blavatnik, Kreos, MCI and more, and its last valuation was $1.5 billion, pegged to a $200 million fundraise in May 2019.

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. reached an agreement that will cut the debt it owes lenders who financed its rental car fleet to less than $5 billion from $11 billion by Dec. 31. As part of the deal, Hertz has agreed to sell 182,000 cars over the next few months. Hertz also has to make $650 million in lease payments.

Sea Machines Robotics, an autonomous ship navigation startup, raised $15 million in Series B funding round led by Accomplice. Brunswick, Eniac VC, Geekdom Fund, LaunchCapital, NextGen Venture Partners, and Toyota AI Ventures also joined the round.

SmartHop, a Florida-based startup that developed software to small trucking companies manage their business, raised $4.5 million in a seed round led by Equal Ventures. Additional investors in the round include Greycroft, Las Olas VC.

Swoop, a Los Angeles-based SaaS startup that has built a booking and management platform for local transportation companies has raised $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Signia Venture Partners, South Park Commons and several angel investors, including former Uber CPO Manik Gupta; Kevin Weil, co-creator of Libra at Facebook; Kim Fennel, a former Uber executive; and Elizabeth Weil, former partner at Andreessen Horowitz and 137 Ventures.

Sibros, a connected vehicle platform company, raised $12 million in Series A funding, bringing its total capital raised to more than $15 million. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners with participation from Moneta Ventures and Twin Ventures. Sibros has developed a platform that connects and manages all vehicle software inventory and configurations as well as collects data from every sensor and component. The upshot? The platform is designed so automakers can provide in-vehicle firmware updates as well as advanced analytics.

XPeng, the electric vehicle startup run by former Alibaba executive He Xiaopeng, raised around $500 million in a Series C+ round to further develop models tailored to China’s tech-savvy middle-class consumers. Investors in Xpeng’s latest round include Hong Kong-based private equity firm Aspex Management, American tech hedge fund Coatue Management, China’s top private equity fund Hillhouse Capital and Sequoia Capital China. Existing big-name backers include Foxconn, Xiaomi, GGV Capital, Morningside Venture Capital, IDG Capital and Primavera Capital.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Here’s an additional roundup of transportation news that got my attention.

Autonomous vehicles

Amazon is taking its autonomous delivery robot Scout on the road. Scout will expand operations to two cities in the American Southeast: Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee.

Aurora, the autonomous vehicle technology startup backed by Amazon, is expanding into Texas as it aims to accelerate the development of self-driving trucks. The company plans to test commercial routes in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area with a mix of Fiat Chrysler Pacifica minivans and Class 8 trucks. A small fleet of Pacificas will arrive first. The trucks will be on the road in Texas by the end of the year, Aurora said.

Kiwibot, the delivery robot startup that got its start shuttling burritos and snacks to students on the University of California-Berkeley campus, is expanding to San Jose with a new business model and partners Shopify and Ordermark.

Waymo and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles struck a deal to develop and test autonomous cargo vans and other light commercial vehicles designed to shuttle goods. The agreement is an expansion of a partnership that kicked off four years ago with a focus on self-driving Pacifica hybrid minivans meant to transport people.

A few items are worth noting here (bear with me). The initial plan is to integrate Waymo’s self-driving stack — the suite of software and hardware that allows the vehicle to operate without a human behind the wheel — into FCA’s Ram ProMaster vans. These self-driving cargo vans will be used by Waymo Via, the company’s trucking and local delivery service.

It appears that the terms of the deal could extend far beyond Waymo Via. It’s possible that FCA could supply other transport companies with the self-driving vans (equipped with Waymo tech) through a licensing deal. It’s also important to note that the partnership covers FCA’s entire portfolio of vehicles. And folks familiar with the deal tell me it also extends to future affiliates. This point matters because FCA and French automaker Groupe PSA are in the process of merging into a newly formed corporation called Stellantis. If the 50-50 merger closes as expected in the first quarter of next year, the agreement would theoretically include all the brands that fall under Stellantis.

Finally, you might recall that FCA announced a partnership with Aurora last year. It turns out that this was a memorandum of understanding to work together, an agreement that has since run its course and ended, a spokesperson said. The two companies are still working on custom-built Pacifica hybrids, which Aurora is using in its testing. They are not developing autonomous commercial vans.

It’s electric

Audi CEO Markus Duesmann conceded that Tesla has a significant technological lead in several areas, including in battery tech. Audi is making efforts to catch up. For instance, the company is researching bi-directional charging that would integrate electric vehicles into the domestic power grid.

Faraday Future’s founder had his personal bankruptcy plan approved. The Verge rooted out the most interesting details that surfaced in court.

Ford took a page out of Tesla’s playbook and unveiled a special edition of its forthcoming four-door electric Mustang. This one-off has seven electric motors producing a total of 1,400 HP, which to put into layman’s terms, is a shit-ton of power.

General Motors is on track to deliver 20 electric vehicles by 2023, the company said in its latest sustainability report. That includes models for nearly all of its brands, including Cadillac,  GMC, Chevrolet  and Buick. Most of these vehicles will use GM’s new modular EV architecture, called Ultium. Matt Burns provides an overview on 12 upcoming models.

Rivian has started to run a pilot production line at its factory in Normal, Illinois and says it will start deliveries of its all-electric pickup truck and SUV next summer. Rivian said deliveries of its R1T electric pickup truck will begin in June 2021. Deliveries of the R1S electric SUV will start in August 2021.

Tesla filed a lawsuit against electric vehicle automaker Rivian and four former employers, on allegations of poaching talent and stealing trade secrets.

Miscellaneous

Jaguar Land Rover is working with the University of Cambridge to develop a touchless touchscreen for future cars, per Car and Driver.

Turo kicked off a campaign that I can say I would not have predicted last summer.  The peer-to-peer car rental startup designed  Turo Car Masks — yes, a giant mask for a vehicle — and is working with manufacturers to make them for top hosts as a way to promote travel safety. This image is a preliminary design. Turo tells me that anything it produces will be safe for the road.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and the NETT Council issued a document that provides a guidance for emerging transportation technology, including hyperloop. Importantly, it establishes hyperloop’s eligibility for federal funding for projects.

“We have determined that these hyperloop projects are just as eligible for grant as any maglev or magnetic levitation project,” said Finch Fulton, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy during the live-streamed event. “This includes the Federal Railroad Administration Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program, the Office of the Secretary BUILD and INFRA grants, and programs of that sort. This also means that they would be eligible for some of the Department’s loan and lending programs.”

Volkswagen wants to turn its cloud-based software and data portal called the Industrial Cloud Network into a broader marketplace for other manufacturing and technology companies. The Industrial Cloud Network, designed by VW and Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as integration partner Siemens, would operate like an app store. Manufacturing technology and partner companies will be able collaborate on new software applications and eventually connect VW factories around the world to its global suppliers.

We’re T-minus five and counting, startup fans — counting the days you have left to save up to $300 on passes to Disrupt 2020. The early-bird clock stops ticking on July 31 precisely at 11:59 p.m. PT. Be a savvy saver. Beat the clock, buy your pass and keep that extra cash in your wallet.

Disrupt 2020 runs from September 14-18 giving you five magnificent days to meet attendees from around the world, explore new technologies, discover the latest trends, expand your startup knowledge and connect with the people who can help your business grow.

Let’s talk about two of the main features of Disrupt 2020 — Digital Startup Alley and the Startup Battlefield. Head on over to Digital Startup Alley and discover hundreds of pre-series A startups — including the TC Top Picks, a cadre of outstanding startups selected by discerning TechCrunch editors — exhibiting their latest tech products, platforms and services. Schedule video meetings to watch product demos, talk with founders, discover opportunities for collaboration, investment or employment.

And CrunchMatch, our AI-powered networking platform, makes it easier than ever to find the people and startups that align with your goals and interests — or for those folks to find you. Fill out a few quick questions and get ready for efficient networking done right.

“The CrunchMatch networking platform, which is basically speed-dating for techies, was very helpful. I scheduled at least 10 short, precise meetings. I learned about startups in stealth mode, what big corporations were up to — things not yet picked up by the press. It was great, and I followed up on three or four of those connections.” — Jens Lehmann, technical lead and product manager, SAP.

Don’t miss the gem of every Disrupt event — the Startup Battlefield pitch competition. Early-stage startups from around the world applied, and only a small cadre met TechCrunch editors’ exacting standards. They’ll have just six minutes deliver their best pitch and demo to a tough panel of expert judges.

What’s at stake? The coveted Disrupt Cup, massive exposure to global media and investors and — drumroll please — $100,000 in equity-free cash. Who knows, you just might witness future tech giants launching on a world stage.

We haven’t even touched on the dozens of speakers, panel discussions and breakout sessions you can enjoy across the Disrupt stages — and we’re announcing more speakers every week.

Disrupt 2020 takes place on September 14-18. If you want to be a savvy saver, you need to play beat the clock. Buy your early-bird pass before July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT to save up to $300.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

 

Stanford’s success in spinning out startup founders is a well-known adage in Silicon Valley, with alumni founding companies like Google, Cisco, Cloudflare, LinkedIn, Youtube, Snapchat, Instagram, and yes, even TechCrunch. And venture capitalists routinely back more founders coming out of the Stanford business program than any other university in the country.

One group of Stanford graduate students is well-aware of their favorable odds, and think that they should be able to cash in their classmates, too — not just accredited investors and the super-wealthy.

They have put together, Stanford 2020, a new fund created entirely by Stanford classmates to invest in their fellow students’ ventures.

The idea was spurred by six students, who after a year of working with Fenwick & West law firm to find a suitable legal structure landed on creating an investment club — multiple parties can invest together as long as they have some form of shared ties.

Steph Mui, a founding member of Stanford 2020 and former venture capital associate at VC firm NEA, formed the club in defiance of the inaccessibility of angel investing, which she described as an elite Silicon Valley status symbol.

“Especially in Silicon Valley where it seems kind of a status symbol and only accredited people can do it, it feels very elite” she said. “We started thinking more about if we can actually make this something that the whole class could participate in, or at least make it more accessible to more than just like these small pockets of people that do it behind closed doors?”

Stanford 2020 club members must put up a minimum of $3,000 to join the investment club, and any eventual returns will be distributed proportionally to the investment each makes. So far, Mui tells TechCrunch that $1.5 million has been raised across 175 investors, with 50 investors willing to give $500,000 on the waitlist. In fact, the club is so “oversubscribed” that it is working to give money back.

Mui estimates that roughly 40% of the class is participating in the club. The founding members are being defined as “board members” who were recruited for passion and for diversity in background, professional interests, and past leadership experience.

The group plans to invest $50,000 to $100,000 in startups depending on round size and valuation.

Mui thinks that Stanford 2020’s competitive advantage is largely the personal relationship it has with the companies it will invest in. After all, success might be just an arms reach away. Notoriously, Cloudflare, Rent the Runway, and Thredup were all born in the same classroom after being assigned a class project, according to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.

“We have such strong pre-existing relationships, we know what people are working on way before they even raise,” she said.

Anyone who has been part of a club or team before knows that loyalty runs deep, but we’ll see if that closeness is enough for a founder to dole out a stake in their company. While Stanford 2020 doesn’t take any management fee or carry, equity isn’t casual; in that vein, a famed Silicon Valley firm might be of better utility than your classmates.

Stanford 2020’s set up sounds similar to StartX, the university’s attempt at investing in its own, leafy backyard which shut down in 2019. Launched in 2013, StartX offered to invest money in exchange for equity in any startup that went through its auxiliary accelerator and has $500,000 from professional investors.

Looking at Stanford 2020’s set up, the rules are almost exactly the same. Mui tells TechCrunch that startups must fulfill two criteria in order to automatically invest: first, the co-founder must be a member of the class, and second, they must raise a round of $750,000 or more from a reputable institutional investor. They define reputable as a list of 80 investors they got guidance on from advisors in the industry.

The concept of a rule-based automatic investment strategy comes with a big red flag: what if the founder has a bad idea or is a bad person, and still meets the criteria?

“I actually literally can’t think of a single person and I’m like, that person is so bad or so immoral, that we wouldn’t invest in them,” Mui said. “That’s part of the benefit of investing only in your classmates.”

But in case a Stanford-born class does have a problematic founder, Stanford 2020 has a veto voting mechanism.

In the grand scheme of things, Stanford-born startups are in a better spot than most when it comes to securing cash. They don’t desperately need another fund to invest in them. Mui’s ambition for Stanford 2020 is that other schools can copy and paste the legal structure they took a year (and a lot of hard work) to figure out.

She says they’re already getting inbound from incoming Stanford classes, other Stanford Schools, and undergraduates. Now that it’s closed, she hopes they hear from other business schools, too .

Walmart’s recent partnership with Shopify to expand its online marketplace appears to already be paying off.  The retailer in June announced it was opening its marketplace to Shopify’s small business sellers with the goal of onboarding 1,200 new sellers by the end of 2020. Following the Shopify announcement, the marketplace added 3,000 more sellers in June and is expected to exceed 3,600 in July, according to a new report from research firm Marketplace Pulse. That’s triple how many sellers it was adding at the beginning of 2020, the firm’s numbers indicate.

The e-commerce intelligence firm, which works directly with retailers and marketplaces and produces industry analysis, looked into Walmart Marketplace’s accelerated growth following the Shopify deal. It found that within the first six weeks after the June 15th partnership announcement, Walmart’s Marketplace added over 5,000 new sellers.

In comparison, Walmart’s Marketplace added only 1,296 new sellers in January 2020. That figure grew to 2,290 in April, then 3,296 by June. With July’s estimates included, the marketplace will have topped 15,000 new sellers in 2020 by this month’s end. To date, the marketplace has surpassed 50,000 sellers — which is double in size from June 2019.

Walmart’s marketplace growth is much slower than Amazon’s, the firm notes. But this is, in part, due to its process around adding sellers. Its marketplace requires sellers go through an approval process, which is something it does in an attempt to avoid counterfeiters and other issues. Amazon, meanwhile, adds thousands of sellers daily.

Of course, not all this recent growth can be attributable to Shopify. The pandemic has sent a surge of customers to shop online and sellers are arriving to meet that demand. But Marketplace Pulse believes Walmart has already surpassed its goal of 1,200 new Shopify sellers by year-end.

These newly added Shopify stores aren’t distinguished from other sellers on the website, so there’s not an automated way to count their numbers. But the firm says manually checked dozens of new additions to confirm their Shopify affiliation and believes the accelerated marketplace growth is closely tied to the new e-commerce deal.

Of course, seller growth is not the only metric used to judge a marketplace’s success. Walmart’s catalog size has actually decreased despite all the new additions, the report noted. Since the start of 2020, the total number of products has shrunk by nearly 15 million, from around 50 million down to 36 million. This was related to a few large sellers delisting their catalogs of mostly products in the Home and Books categories, though. Still, the marketplace accounted for 90% of Walmart’s overall assortment, even with these delistings.

The report also added that what matters most is not the size or the number of sellers, but rather the sellers’ performance. On that front, the firm recently found that Walmart’s marketplace, though smaller, was outperforming both Amazon and eBay, driven by the significant increase in Walmart.com shoppers during the pandemic. That increased traffic was also aided by Walmart’s merging of its Grocery app into its main app, a transition that is still underway. Around a month after the merge began, the Walmart app on May 13th became the number one shopping app on iPhone.

We’re excited to announce a new event at Disrupt 2020. Called Pitch Deck Teardown, top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will evaluate and suggest fixes for Disrupt 2020 attendees’ pitch decks.

First impressions are everything, and pitch decks are often the first glimpse of companies by investors and business partners. It’s critical that these decks accurately present and illustrate the company’s goals and potential concisely and effectively.

We’ve enlisted the help of some of the best venture capitalists. During these sessions, VCs will step through each slide, talking about what works, what doesn’t work, and what needs to be changed to make the most impact. Along the way, expect to hear valuable insight on how investors evaluate pitch decks and the red flags that can shut down a potential investment.

What’s more, we’re looking for pitch decks to feature in these sessions. We want to showcase real pitch decks from actual companies. Anyone can submit their deck though we’re looking for decks from early stage companies. Submit your pitch deck here.

Some guidelines

• When submitting, please use the email you used when you registered for Disrupt 2020
• Only pitch decks of registered Disrupt attendees will be selected
• Early stage companies are more likely to be selected for this session
• If selected, you’ll be notified and told which session your deck will be featured in

Here are the investors signed up for the Pitch Deck Teardown

• Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures)
• Charles Hudson (Venture Forward)
• Niko Bonatsos (General Catalyst)
• Megan Quinn (Spark Capital)
• Cyan Banister (Long Journey Ventures)
• Roelof Botha (Sequoia)
• Susan Lyne (BBG)

Pitch Deck Teardown is part of a much larger event focused on all aspects of building technology companies. For the first time, TechCrunch’s big yearly event, Disrupt, is going fully virtual in 2020, allowing more people to attend and interact with speakers, investors, and founders. And Disrupt will stretch over five days — September 14-18 — in order to make it easier for everyone to take in all the amazing programming. Prices increase this Friday, so get your pass now and then submit your pitch deck for invaluable feedback from our panel of VCs.